Irregular heartbeat in healthy women poses risk

By Janice Lloyd USA TODAY

Wednesday

May 25, 2011 at 8:51 AM

Heart specialists are encouraging seemingly healthy middle-aged women who develop a rapid heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation to get a medical evaluation now that research has linked these irregular beats to an increased risk of death. Until now, atrial fibrillation, or AF, has been considered a danger mainly to the elderly or those with cardiovascular disease and other health problems. But a new study in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association shows increased death risk even among women who are “at absolute low risk of cardiovascular disease at baseline,” says study co-author David Conen of University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland. AF increased the risk of death “about twofold,” says co-author Christine Albert, a cardiac specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “The absolute risk was very low,” she says. “However, lives can be saved, evaluating risk is important, and risk is not the same for everyone.” AF is the most common type of arrhythmia. It afflicts 2 million people in the USA, and its prevalence increases as more people become overweight. In most cases it is characterized by an unorganized or fast heart rhythm, says co-author Teresa Tsang of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). The heart may race to 150 to 200 beats a minute; normal is 60 to 100 beats. Though not immediately life-threatening by itself, Tsang says, AF puts patients at significantly higher risk for stroke, heart attack and congestive heart failure. The new research is based on 15 years of data from the Women’s Health Study, which examined more than 34,000 participants who were older than 45 and had no prediagnosed heart conditions at the start. During the study period, 1,011 women developed atrial fibrillation, and 63 of them died. “What this means for women with atrial fibrillation is that it is very important to seek medical attention and have their risk evaluated,” Albert says. “We don’t want to over-alarm people, but we also don’t want people to think these are benign.”

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